Cream of the crop

>>London’s New Young Pony Club
ride the new-rave wave

PONY IS THE NEW WOLF: NYPC

By LORRAINE CARPENTER

FYI, the “I [heart] NY PC” shirts you’ve seen in magazines, on flyers and on skinny new-ravers around town lately have nothing to do with New York City, computers or, luckily, political correctness. New Young Pony Club is a British quintet bent on moving butts by spinning on the post-disco/synthpop/no wave axis of the early ’80s. Their career has been on a slow boil since singer Tahita Bulmer, guitarist Andy Spence, keyboardist Lou Hayter, bassist Igor Volk and drummer Sarah Jones joined forces in 2004, gradually steaming up dancefloors with a series of singles, notably “Ice Cream,” a brilliant showcase for Bulmer’s cool, casual sass.

This year, the band released their debut album, Fantastic Playroom, on Australia’s Modular Recordings (home of Wolfmother and Cut Copy), remixed Amy Winehouse’s “Tears Dry on Their Own,” toured with Lily Allen and continued to keep the company of social deviants (namely CSS and Klaxons) on the NME’s Indie Rave tour, gaining a reputation for being a hot live act. Bulmer has also been nominated by PETA for a Sexiest (female) Vegetarian Award (the polls are still open!), which went to Natalie Portman last year.

Montreal will witness NYPC’s majesty for the first time this weekend, and so the Mirror exchanged e-mails with Mr. Spence, a versatile musician who also has the score for the Tibetan film Dreaming Lhasa to his credit.

Mirror: When did you begin to make music, and what form did it take initially?

Andy Spence: I was about nine when I first learnt guitar and started making my own sounds. Later on, I got a drum machine and started writing songs with simple beats.

M: Was there one particular artist, group or clatch of bands that inspired you to take it up?

AS: I found my older brother’s punk records and that sparked my first real excitement about music, and it just seemed natural to make my own. However, I was probably trying to make music more like Duran Duran when I first started.

M: Having been inspired by several somewhat disparate styles, how long did it take you to tap into NYPC’s current sound? Any false starts?

AS: Yes, but not false starts really, more just tests on how far we could go. We had many inspirations, it’s true, and we wanted to include as many as possible, but after a while, we found what we called the bookends of the NYPC sound. When we did something from then on, we would know immediately if it was NYPC or not.

M: Describe an ideal NYPC gig.

AS: We play all night to all our friends on an intimate beach in a remote tropical island with a free bar. Prince and David Bowie join us onstage for several songs. Everybody is smiling and dancing all night. Then we all have out-of-body experiences and think we’re Iggy and the Stooges circa 1971.

M: Describe a nightmarish NYPC gig.

AS: We play in a shithole basement club in Old Street, people can walk all over the stage, and when we kick them off, they start spitting at us, then we get thrown out for trying to go to our dressing room, which is in the bar next door, handily. Guess which one’s true!

M: Why do girls love horses?

AS: I’ll tell you later...

With host DL Jones, DJ Why Alex Why?
and special guests at Cabaret Juste Pour Rire on
Monday, Oct. 22, 8 p.m., $17.55